I
woke up this morning out of a strange dream. We were in a my mother-in-law¨s
hospital room. Doctors and other personnel were coming in, and removing
tubes and medical equipment, and covering her with perfectly clean brand
new soft pink sheets. Someone asked them what they were doing and
another said, "We're taking out the toothpicks."
She had
a serious stroke in January, and it truly seems that she is only being
held together now by toothpicks.
In her
case, no one knew how long it had been since the stroke began, so they
were unable to give her the drug which can help to reverse the effects,
if given within two hours of the onset. As a result, she is paralyzed
on her whole right side, with no really significant expectation of regaining
any use of that side. She also had another small bleed out a couple
of days later which took away the tiniest bit of movement in her right
foot. She has been able to regain some of her speech, and can communicate,
if you pay attention and translate. But she still has a lot of difficulty
finding the right words to say and she sometimes is really simply not
all there mentally. In the lucid moments, she still fully understands
and is aware of her situation and what's going on around her. Being
aware is not necessarily a blessing.
Because
of her need for round the clock care, she had to be transferred to a
nursing home. She hates this, of course, and we do also. Even a pretty
decent nursing home is a very sad place for people in her state. The
personnel and the administrators there seem perfectly fine and caring
as far as we can tell, but there are simply not enough personnel to
provide all of the care everyone needs. It's a non-profit home, so although
the surroundings are adequate...that's all they are, and it's a little
rough around the edges in the aesthetic department.
I've never
personally known anyone who has had a stroke until now, but I am here
to testify that it is a very cruel thing--the meanest thing I've seen
so far, maybe excepting terminal cancer. I never want to have a stroke,
and I pray that when it is my time I will simply drop dead as has happened
in the past to most of my relatives who have died. I sure plan to have
my advance directives in place so that no one brings me back to live
as a stroke victim as has happened to my mother in law.
Before
this, she was an active 83 year old, volunteering twice a week at a
charity thrift store, helping to deliver meals on wheels to other seniors
in her building. Everyone she knew there loved her because she was such
a kind and caring person. The manager of the building cried when we
told her she had a stroke and would not be returning. She enjoyed writing
letters to her friends and talking on the phone, neither of which she
can do now.
Now she's
miserably unhappy, and not adjusting at all well to the nursing home.
She's
been back in the hospital again for a week, and I think she is in much
worse shape that she was even last week. We talked to her doctor yesterday
and he said he was having a hard time adjusting her meds enough so that
she could be taken care of in the home. He said that he was half tempted
to just take her off all of her medications and let nature take it's
course. My husband agreed that that might be a good idea.
It's time
to take the toothpicks out and give her those nice clean comforting
brand new soft pink sheets.